Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

June 27, 2008 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - It may offer "dry
heat", but that doesn't mean it can't also be wet in Phoenix
- a city that tops the annual list of the nation's sweatiest
cities by Old Spice deodorant.

In celebration of the beginning of summer, Old Spice
this week announced its Seventh Annual Top-100 Sweatiest
Cities List – and this year, for the first time ever, also
introduced its list of Biggest Sweat Producers, taking into
consideration the total sweat produced by entire city
populations.

As for those sweaty cities, Las Vegas has the
“distinction” of coming in second, followed by Tallahassee,
Florida.
The ranking is based on computer simulations of the amount
of sweat an average person would have produced walking
around in cities for an hour during June, July and August
of last year.

To earn top spot as Sweatiest City, Phoenix’s average
temperature was 95.1 degrees in June, July and August 2007,
resulting in the average Phoenix resident producing 26.4
ounces of sweat per hour (more than 2 cans of soda).
Oh, and Phoenix has topped the sweaty city list in 2007,
2006, 2005 and 2003.

“People might be surprised that a city known for its
‘dry heat’ tops the Sweatiest Cities list,” said Dr. Paul
Ruscher, associate professor and associate chair of
meteorology at Florida State University, in a press
release. “However, sweat tends to evaporate from the skin
much more quickly in places like Phoenix and people just
don’t feel it as much as say in New Orleans or Miami where
high humidity leads to that dreaded sticky, ‘muggy’
feeling.”

However, when it came to the Biggest Sweat Producer,
Phoenix was a distant sixth place behind the Big Apple.
New York topped this new listing, even though the average
temperature was just 73.8 degrees during June, July and
August 2007.
However, according to Old Spice, on an average summer day,
New Yorkers can produce 1.3 million gallons of sweat per
hour.
That was well ahead of second-place Los Angeles (608,664
gallons of sweat per hour) and Chicago with 449,285
gallons.
Also on that list:

Houston 387,790 gallons

Norfolk, Virginia 376,087 gallons

Phoenix 311,629 gallons

Philadelphia 238,869 gallons

San Antonio 229,606 gallons

Dallas 222,420 gallons

San Diego 184,929 gallons

Other Study Highlights

On a typical summer day, residents of Los Angeles
- the city with the most cars on the road in the nation
- can collectively produce enough sweat to fill the gas
tanks of 27,667 SUVs in just one hour (how's THAT for
an alternative source of energy?).

Living up to its nickname, the Sunshine State has
four cities appearing in the Top 10